The fire protection zone penetrating member is installed in piping or a cable provided in a fire protection zone, for the purpose to prevent flame, gas, smoke or the like from spreading via a through-holes provided in the piping or cable, at the through-hole when a fire breaks out. When a fire breaks out, the fire protection zone penetrating member expands due to the heat of the fire, and clogs the through-hole. Generally thermally expanding rubber or thermally resin is used as a material for the fire protection zone penetrating member.
The conventional type of fire protection zone penetrating member is accommodated within a square or circular metallic casing. One based on a simple construction is now pending under the Japanese Patent Application No. H08-245833. This fire protection zone penetrating member now under patent application is based on a one-touch operation system having a thermally expanding member provided on a C-shaped elastic metal plate. This fire protection zone penetrating member can easily be mounted, but the thermally expanding member is mounted on the metal plate later, so that a long time is required for manufacturing the same.
To solve this problem, the present inventor has applied the Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-92609 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-280550) for a fire protection zone penetrating member manufactured by slicing a lengthy cylindrical body and providing an expanding slot on each of the sliced portions so that the cost can be minimized and the member can be mounted with a one-touch operation.
For manufacturing this type of fire protection zone penetrating member, however, as a thermally expanding material is extruded from an extruder to form a lengthy cylindrical body. The lengthy cylindrical body is sliced, a long period of time is required for manufacturing it. In addition sometimes problems occur that the elasticity is not sufficient in the extrusion-molded product, or that, in a case where, for instance, a product with a metal sheet adhered on the surface is to be produced,
the metal sheet is required to be adhered thereto later. Further as only one expanding slot is provided in the fire protection zone penetrating member, it is necessary, when mounted on piping, to open the expanding slot to the size allowing the piping to pass therethrough, and to open the expanding slot to the outer diameter of the piping, the work must be done with two hands, so that the operation for mounting it on piping is very troublesome. In addition, when removing it from the piping, it is necessary to insert a driver or other specific tool for opening, and also a large work load is required for removing it from the piping, which is disadvantageous.
In the fire protection zone penetrating member having a cylindrical form, the cross section is round, and it can be opened along and making use of the expanding slot, so that displacement never occurs after mounting when the outer diameter of the piping to which the member is mounted is equal to or larger than an inner diameter of the fire protection zone penetrating member. When the outer diameter of the piping is smaller than the inner diameter of the fire protection zone penetrating member, the joint between the two components is loose, and the position can not be fixed in application. In this case, especially when the member is mounted on vertical piping, the member may drop downward due to the gravity, and to prevent this trouble, it is necessary to temporally fix the member with mortar or putty, and this work also required an additional work load.
Further a number of fire protection zone penetrating members having different sizes respectively must be prepared, so that many types of members are required, which results in higher production cost.